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wellesleyunderground · 5 years

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Wellesley Writes It: Interview with Kwan Kew Lai ’74 (@KwanKew), infectious disease physician & author of LEST WE FORGET: A DOCTOR’S EXPERIENCE WITH LIFE AND DEATH DURING THE EBOLA OUTBREAK

Kwan Kew Lai ’74, M.D., D.M.D., is an infectious disease specialist who has volunteered her medical services all over the world and the author of Lest We Forget: A Doctor’s Experience with Life and Death During the Ebola Outbreak. In 2004, after the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, she spent three weeks in India, caring for survivors. She soon left her position as a full-time Professor of Medicine in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine at UMass Memorial Medical Center and created a half-time position as a clinician, dedicating the other half of her time to humanitarian work.

Since 2005, Lai has volunteered as a mentor to health workers addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Vietnam, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Malawi and has provided earthquake relief in Haiti and Nepal, hurricane relief in the Philippines and drought and famine relief in Kenya and the Somalian border. She has also worked with refugees of the Democratic Republic of Congo and internally displaced people in Libya during the Arab Spring and South Sudan after the civil war and treated Ebola patients in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Most recently, she served as a medical volunteer in the Syrian refugee camps in mainland Greece and in Moria refugee camp on Lesvos, Greece for refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and the countries of the Sub-Saharan Africa and in the world’s biggest refugee camps for the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Lai has blogged extensively about her experiences.

Originally from Penang, Malaysia, Lai came to the United States after receiving a scholarship to attend Wellesley, where she studied molecular biology. “Without that open door I would not have gone on to become a doctor,” Lai wrote in her Doctors Without Borders bio.

Lai has received numerous awards for her work, which include being a three-time recipient of the President’s Volunteer Service Award. In 2017, she was awarded Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award. In addition, Lai is the lead author of many publications and presentations. Her research has included HIV studies, infection control, hospital epidemiology, and antibiotic trials. She has served on many committees, task forces, and boards, including the Governor’s Advisory Board for the Elimination of Tuberculosis in Massachusetts. She is also an avid marathon runner and paints when she is inspired.

Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes it Series Editor, E.B. Bartels ’10, had the chance to converse with Lai via email about Lest We Forget and about her experiences at Wellesley and beyond. E.B. would also like to make note that Lai made time to answer these questions even while busy with her 45th Wellesley Reunion!

EB: How did Lest We Forget come about? What inspired you to write the book?

KKL: I first became aware of the Ebola outbreak in March of 2014, I began to follow it very closely. I read about Ebola when I was in my training as an infectious disease specialist. It is a deadly viral infection but it usually occurs in Africa and I knew that it would be unlikely for me to see a patient with this infection. In the summer of 2014 when WHO finally acknowledged the seriousness of the situation, the nightly TV images of people desperate to get into a hospital and bodies lying in the streets because they were too infectious to be touched, moved me. I knew I had to be in West Africa to volunteer.

I started blogging a few years ago when I went to volunteer to enable my family and close friends to keep abreast of my situation and so I did the same when I started volunteering in the Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU). Deeper into my volunteering I was very moved by the courage and resilience of the patients and the dedication and dogged determination of the people who worked alongside me and who risked their lives working in the frontline. After my first stint in West Africa, I was interviewed by NPR international health correspondent, Nurith Aizenman, about my experience and she had urged me to write a book. I had thought about that as well before she brought it up but I was too taken up into my second stint of Ebola volunteer by then. When I was in Sierra Leone doing my second Ebola volunteering, I was also contacted by an agency who wanted to represent me with either writing a book or making a documentary. However just before I left for Sierra Leone, I signed with my first agent about my book on Africa which is about my experiences as a volunteered doctor in HIV/AIDS and my work in the refugee camps. I did not feel it was ethically right to deal with another agency. Nevertheless, writing a book about Ebola became more urgent, I wanted to write this in honor and memory of the people afflicted by Ebola and the frontline bola fighters who put their lives on the line. It took me awhile for me to convince my agent to present my book on Ebola first before my book on Africa.

EB: Lest We Forget is a work of nonfiction and, not only that, a book about a very intense topic. What was challenging about writing about that subject? What kept you wanting to write the book, even if it was difficult? And how did you handle writing about people's personal experiences, especially when dealing with sensitive medical information?

KKL: Keeping a daily blog helped to lighten the burden of writing about the trauma of the people all at once. The blog became my fact book that I could go back to if I did forget an event or a person. As I stated before, the book was written as a tribute to the people I wanted to honor and remember, that helped the process a great deal. I changed the names of the people as much as I could to preserve confidentiality. Keeping a blog daily also provided me an emotional catharsis while volunteering in the ETU. I also wanted to rejoice with the people who recovered from this grave illness.

EB: Is Lest We Forget is your first book? What was challenging about writing it, and what was rewarding about the process?

KKL: No, it is not my first book. In February 2014, I signed with an agent for my Africa book which I had been writing for a couple of years before Lest We Forget, which is about my volunteering experiences in Africa. Before then I attempted to write a book, a sort of coming-of-age story for my children, this has not been presented to anyone. My years of writing on my own have taught me that I still have a lot of work on that book and it would have to go through many more draughts. Keeping a blog or diary helps with one’s writing. Reading a lot and writing, both help with my writing.

I also learned a lot through trying to find an agent or publisher for my book, if there is no market for the topic of one’s book, it will not likely to be accepted by either. My book on Africa, tentatively titled, Into Africa: A Journey from Academic Medicine to Bush Medicine has been accepted a few months ago for publication next year, I found a publisher without the help of my agent. It will now go through many months of work with the editors, etc. before the actual date of publication. I was told nine to fifteen months from May.

EB: What advice would you give to someone writing a book? Perhaps someone also writing a nonfiction book about an intense topic?

KKL: Writing and rewriting many times over. Keep a blog on your experiences, despite the intensity, you would be surprised how your mind works to block the painful parts of the experiences. If you have some willing readers, it may be helpful to let others read your draughts.

EB: In addition to your work as an infectious disease specialist, have you always enjoyed writing? Did you write at all before this book? Did you study writing while you were at Wellesley?

KKL: As a professor of medicine, I presented in national and international conferences, wrote and published many scientific papers, and a few medical essays. As foreign students, we were all required to take a course in English as second language during our first year, I did not find this very helpful but it was required. In my junior year, I took a writing course in which we were required to write and critique each other’s writings. We met once a week at the professor’s home. I did not find this helpful either. It seemed quite subjective and I think it was an easy course for the professor who I think did not offer helpful advice on our writing. I find scientific writings tend to be precise, cut and dry, very different from creative writing and as my background is in science, I have a great deal to learn.

EB: How did your time at Wellesley influence you and your career path, if at all?

KKL: I was more influenced by what I read during my teenage years. Wellesley provided a safe and secure place for me to grow. Coming from an Asian background, we are not taught to seek guidance and friendship from the professors, they are often put on the pedestal to revere and not as someone you could seek advice, reveal your vulnerabilities, or share your ambitions with. In my later years, I’m often jealous of Wellesley classmates who kept up friendship with their professors after they left college. My foreign student advisor at Wellesley advised me not to apply to medical schools because many excellent foreign students in the past did not get admitted and that I should apply to other allied health professions instead. I was accepted at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine after my junior year but I realized that Medicine was still my first love and after my dental degree I went back to medical school.

EB: Who at Wellesley made the biggest impact on you and your career? Faculty, staff, fellow students? Which particular individuals?

KKL: As I expressed above, I wished I was freer in finding advisors in my professors. Jeanette McPherrin, who became the Dean of Foreign Students during my last years at Wellesley, will always be remembered by me as a friend who kept up a correspondence with me until she passed. I found her to be non-judgmental, genuinely kind, and interested in all foreign students as individuals.

The biggest impact for me was when Wellesley College offered me a full scholarship, this gave me the opportunity to get an education and fulfil my ambition to be a doctor. I remember being inspired by Dr. Tom Dooley and Dr. Albert Schweitzer who went to underdeveloped countries to provide medical care and Wellesley College’s motto of non ministrari sed ministare also spur me on to pay it forward.

EB: What else would you like our readers to know about you and/or your work?

KKL: I currently live in Belmont, MA and have three children. Last week, I received a letter from the Dean of my medical school that they have selected me to receive their Distinguished Alumnus Service Award in October 2019.

EB: That’s wonderful! Congratulations!

#wellesley #wellesley college #wellesley underground #wellesley writes it #wu #class of 1974 #wellesley '74 #kwan kew lai #e.b. bartels #eb bartels #class of 2010 #wellesley '10 #lest we forget #ebola #ebola outbreak #wellesley writes it series

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myachristophe-blog · 6 years

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Who Will Lead Us to the Promise Land?

“I just think that we got distracted” said Masai Minters. Black people all over the world have been fighting to be treated as human beings for centuries. The Black Panther Party was one of the more superior activist groups who had an immense impact on the African American community, This group of Black men and women were determined to bring forth a revolution and achieve equality for working class people all over. Today, there are still activist groups for African Americans, but their presence has been minute and they have accomplished very little during the 2000s. Many people have lost their drive for resistance and revolution, they have accepted the oppression that African Americans face as "just the way it is" which has resulted in the activist movement plateauing. In comparison to the Black Panther Party, modern day civil rights movements are lacking because they do not have a leader to organize and be a model for the community.

Symbolic to the Black Panther Party, a raised fist.

Masai Minters recalled growing up in the 50's "watching them hitting Black People with fire hoses" on a black and white television at the age of six or seven. News Reporters all over the United States were reporting on the monstrous abuse inflicted on protestors in the South. As a consequence of police brutality, there was a major push back from Black communities and activists in the 60’s. One specific instance is the riots that took place in Watts as a result of a brutal beating performed by officers in front of a group people. According to PBS, “More than 34 people died, 1000 wounded, and an estimated $50 - $100 million in property damage.” Although many criticized these actions, Minters explained that these people were angry now because “Jews and Asians run these stores.” The racial climate was tense, black people wanted change by any means necessary. It was during this time we began to see the rise of the Black Panther Party. In 1966, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale created the militant group in Oakland, California, the Black Panther Party, to protect their neighborhoods from the police. “The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based program” (Brian Baggins).

Masai Minters quoted people's reasons for rioting " I'm mad now, I'm not mad later!"

The Black Panther Party fashioned their belief system after the profound words of Malcolm X. Malcolm X believed there was a need for a militant revolutionary in order to gain equality not only for black people, but all oppressed minorities. The Black Panther leaders listened to Malcolm X’s words with a high regard and united with other activist groups to achieve the equality they desperately needed. The leaders organized educational and informational meetings for the youth in the community to become enlightened. “The Black Panther newspaper also became a crucial tool in the efforts toward propaganda and recruitment, serving both as an internal organ and as the party’s public vehicle.” (Virginia.edu) This newspaper attracted attention because of the blunt message and references to the police. As a result of their growing support, the Black Panther Party intimidated the government and quickly was labeled as threat to national security. The FBI put together a group called COINTELPRO in efforts to “eliminate or discredit or distinguish activist groups” (Masai Minters). COINTELPRO attributed to the demise of the Black Panther by eliminating their leaders in cold blood and causing tensions between them and other activist groups. The government successfully eliminated the party, but not without the Party leaving lasting effects in the United States.

"The Black Messiah" according to Masai Minters.

Not only did the Black Panther Party give African Americans a sense of pride in who they are, they created programs that have now been adopted by the government. For instance in Chicago, the Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton led “five different breakfast programs on the West Side, help[ed] create a free medical center, and initiate[d] a door to door program of health services which test[ed] for sickle cell anemia, and encourage[d] blood drives for the Cook County Hospital.” In present times, the government has implemented many of these programs that originated with the Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party is amongst the few activist groups that have had successes in the United States. Many people feel if the government could bring down the Black Panther Party, what can they do to be successful which led to the decline of revolutionary activism. People in today’s society have become extremely passive with their activism. Today, the most popular activist group is Black Lives Matter.

A member serving lunch to young school girls with the free lunch program the Black Panther’s had in Chicago.

A significant difference between the Black Lives Matters movement and the Black Panther Party is the lack of leadership. This group originated with a hashtag after social media was constantly being bombarded with videos of police officers murdering African Americans. The Black Lives Matter group lacks a clear ideology. Frank Leon Roberts wrote, “The BLM movement’s unrelenting work on the issue of police corruption, helped incite the release of four unprecedented U.S. Department of Justice reports that confirm the widespread presence of police corruption in Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, and Cleveland.” These reports incited rallies, but they did not change any laws. Masai Minters made the statement, “We [The Black Panther Party] didn’t confuse activity with achievement and I think the Black Lives Matter can confuse that. ” In other words, BLM has been informative and has a large following, but they have not taken those key steps for change. While not having a leader makes it harder to bring down the group because there is no one person leading, it also means that the group is not organized. People need someone to lead and delegate tasks because otherwise, there are no real successes. If the black community wants to progress in the fight for equality and regain the momentum the Black Panther Party once had, then a leader needs to be chosen to organize and advocate for the people. Who will be the Black Messiah that leads us all to the Promise Land?

Sources

Baggins, Brian. Modern History of the Arab Countries by Vladimir Borisovich Lutsky 1969, www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/.

“How Black Lives Matter Changed the Way Americans Fight for Freedom.” American Civil Liberties Union, Aclu, www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/how-black-lives-matter-changed-way-americans-fight.

“Panther Patrols: Publicity and Performance ‘It's About Gettin' the Man's Attention.’” Pullman Strikes Out Introduction, xroads.virginia.edu/~UG01/barillari/pantherchap1.html.

PBS, “Watts Riots.” Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/times/times_watts.html.

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khalilhumam · 4 years

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COVID-19 and Girls' Education: What We Know So Far and What We Expect

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/covid-19-and-girls-education-what-we-know-so-far-and-what-we-expect/

COVID-19 and Girls' Education: What We Know So Far and What We Expect

The potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on girls’ education are numerous and diverse. Most obviously, many schools around the world remain closed, affecting girls’ education directly. But both research and advocacy pieces highlight a host of other potential concerns that either directly or indirectly affect girls’ education and ultimately, their overall wellbeing. Thus far, most of the data from the current epidemic relates to access to distance learning. It’s too early for us to predict with confidence the impact of the pandemic on dropouts and longer-term outcomes. But research from previous pandemics and initial findings in this one can give us clues. Many of these channels affect boys’ education as well.

What we can learn from previous school closures and crises

Much of what we hypothesize about the impact of this crisis draws on what we learn from previous crises. The figure below summarizes some of these channels. Let’s start with the most obvious: school closures lead to learning loss. We know that’s true even during non-emergency school closures, in both rich countries and poor countries. Those learning losses can endure: after schools closed for more than three months due to an earthquake in Pakistan, children’s learning levels were significantly lower, even several years after schools had re-opened. Kids who fall behind in school are more likely to drop out later. We also know that during school closures, girls may be tasked with more household work, including childcare, which can further cut into learning time. Figure: How previous crises have affected girls’ education

Note: Click here for a more detailed version of this figure which including references to where and when each channel has been documented.

Andrabi T, Daniels B, Das J. Human Capital Accumulation and Disasters: Evidence from the Pakistan Earthquake of 2005. 2020.

Bandiera O, Buehren N, Goldstein M, Rasul I, Smurra A. Do School Closures During an Epidemic have Persistent Effects? Evidence from Sierra Leone in the Time of Ebola. 2020.

Evans DK, Hares S, Sandefur J, Steer L. How Much Will COVID Cut Education Budgets? Center For Global Development. 2020

Korkoyah DT, Wreh FF. Ebola Impact Revealed: An Assessment of the Differing Impact of the Outbreak on Women and Men in Liberia. 2015

PLAN International. Ebola: beyond the health emergency. 2015.

Risso-Grill I, Finnegan L. Children’s Ebola Recovery Assessment: Sierra Leone. 2015.

Santos R, Novelli M. The Effect of the Ebola Crisis on the Education System’s Contribution to Post-Conflict Sustainable Peacebuilding in Liberia. 2017.

UNDP. Assessing Sexual and Gender Based Violence during the Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone. 2015.

With a health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic (or the Ebola epidemic before it), sickness and mortality among parents or other household members also interferes with girls’ education by at least two channels (beyond the trauma of losing a parent, in the case of mortality). First, losing a parent may result in reduced income and so a greater need for children to work for pay. In the wake of the Ebola epidemic, girls in Sierra Leone reported gathering stones to sell, selling fruit in the market, and buying and selling scrap metal, among other activities. In some cases, it can even mean transactional sex. In Liberia during the same crisis, girls sometimes became the main income earners in their households. Second, girls may become primary caregivers for sick members of the families and for younger siblings. All of these responsibilities pull girls away from school, sometimes permanently in cases where girls become the household breadwinners. While there have been fewer cases of and deaths from COVID-19 in African countries, other developing regions—like Asia and Latin America—have been hard-hit, with more than 96,000 deaths in India and more than 141,000 in Brazil. The combination of school closures and the disruption of other health services can translate to increased likelihood of adolescent pregnancy, which—despite recent, laudable moves in several countries to make it easier for girls to return to school—still makes getting back to the classroom more difficult. Travel restrictions likewise can reduce access to both reproductive health services and to “safe spaces” like after-school girls’ clubs, which can also translate to increased adolescent pregnancy. Loss of household income can also lead to girls marrying young as a means to generate income for the family through their dowry, especially if compounded with unplanned pregnancy. During the early part of the Ebola crisis, some families opted to send away their children to communities deemed to be safer from the disease, which in some cases exposed the girls to potential sexual abuse by foster parents or guardians. This seems to be less of a concern during the current pandemic, partially because travel restrictions were often implemented with wide coverage and short notice. Finally, an effect not from school closures directly but from previous health and financial crises is that education budgets may get crunched, both at the national level and at the household level. During the East Asian financial crisis in the 1990s, pre-existing disparities between boys and girls were exacerbated. Many countries still have gender gaps in access to secondary education, and budget crunches may slow down the expansion of secondary school, limiting opportunities for girls.

What we know so far from this pandemic

Many of the same channels likely apply in the current pandemic, but data remain limited. In terms of access to learning opportunities while schools have been closed, there is no single story that applies across low- and middle-income countries. A study of adolescents in Ecuador found that girls were both studying more and doing more housework than boys. Across multiple countries, girls reported either less confidence in their computer skills—relevant for distance learning—or less access to the internet. But in other countries (Ethiopia, Peru, and Vietnam), girls have reported at least slightly more access to ongoing educational opportunities than boys. And in other places (Kenya), the numbers are equal. We haven’t yet seen actual data on dropout rates. UNESCO predicts comparable rates of risk of not returning to school for boys and for girls, which translates to 5.2 million girls in primary or secondary school at risk. The Malala Fund does predict differential risk to girls based on experience in past epidemics, and a survey of head teachers in Ethiopia predicted higher dropout rates for girls in the wake of the school closures. A cross-country survey of frontline service organizations reflects similar concerns that girls will be more adversely affected than boys by school closures. Beyond access to distance learning and school dropouts, there are reports of greater mental health difficulties for female medical students in the Philippines and of significantly more time doing housework for girls than for boys in Thailand. More advocacy focused pieces, some of them drawing on anecdotal evidence or learning from past crises, raise a host of additional concerns—increased early marriage, increased adolescent pregnancy, reduced access to health services, higher rates of dropouts among girls, less access to digital technology, and greater overall discouragement. The first measures of learning loss (from a high-income country) don’t report gender differences (remember, researchers, disaggregate your findings by gender!), but they do indicate both significant learning loss on average and increasing inequality both within and between schools. On net, the early indications on access to distance learning do not suggest dramatic, consistent, cross-country gender inequality. But for the outcomes that matter most— getting girls back into schools as they re-open—we just don’t yet have the data.

What about boys?

This post is focused on girls’ education, and while girls face unique obstacles (like disproportionate consequences from adolescent pregnancy), boys face challenges of their own. While child labor in general has been falling over the past two decades, that reduction has come faster for girls than for boys, especially in older age brackets. Boys enter the labor market earlier and in larger numbers than girls and are more likely to work outside of their homes, often as farmhands (e.g., the majority of child laborers work in agriculture). Boys also face the risk of being recruited to militias in areas of unrest, especially with extended school closures. The current pandemic threatens to disrupt recent gains in children’s rights for both girls and boys.

Conclusions

In the coming months, researchers working in countries around the world will continue to document the impact of the crisis on girls’ education and on their well-being more generally. At the same time, failing to act in the absence of better data is a losing strategy. By the time numbers come in documenting increased adolescent pregnancies and dropout rates, the window of opportunity to help at least some of these girls most effectively will have closed. So, what to do? Learn from past crises and invest in no-regret policies. Make sure that girls have access to information and resources for reproductive health, social safety nets to mitigate the need to enter the labor market (particularly in high risk work), and as schools open, ensure that communities and schools make targeted efforts to get girls—and ultimately, all vulnerable children—back in the classroom. The order of authors of this blog post was determined randomly. This post benefitted from suggestions by Shelby Carvalho, Susannah Hares, and Rita Perakis.

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kneestemcellss · 6 years

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Kidney Stone Disease

Kidney stone disease, is when a solid piece of material (kidney stone) occurs in the urinary tract. Kidney stones typically form in the kidney and leave the body in the urine stream. A small stone may pass without causing symptoms. If a stone grows to more than 5 millimeters (0.2 in) it can cause blockage of the ureter resulting in severe pain in the lower back or abdomen. A stone may also result in blood in the urine, vomiting, or painful urination. About half of people will have another stone within ten years.

Most stones form due to a combination of genetics and environmental factors. Risk factors include high urine calcium levels, obesity, certain foods, some medications, calcium supplements, hyperparathyroidism, gout and not drinking enough fluids. Stones form in the kidney when minerals in urine are at high concentration. The diagnosis is usually based on symptoms, urine testing, and medical imaging. Blood tests may also be useful.

In those who have had stones, prevention is by drinking fluids such that more than two liters of urine are produced per day.If this is not effective enough, thiazide diuretic, citrate, or allopurinol may be taken. It is recommended that soft drinks containing phosphoric acid (typically colas) be avoided. When a stone causes no symptoms, no treatment is needed. Otherwise pain control is usually the first measure, using medication. Larger stones may be helped to pass with some medication tamsulosin or may require procedures such as extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy, ureteroscopy, or percutaneous nephrolithotomy.

You should go to your primare care physician if you have an intermittent pain that radiates from the flank to the groin or to the inner thigh. Renal colic caused by kidney stones is commonly accompanied by urinary urgency, restlessness, hematuria, sweating, nausea, and vomiting.

Source Wikipedia.

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anastasiaoftheironwood · 4 years

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History Book List Updates, June 22, 2020

The Medieval Podcast (part of Medievalists.net) has a new episode of book recommendations! The list is extensive, so I encourage you to visit their blog post for the entire thing. A few that stood out for me (and are now on order from my local Books, Inc.—also available through Bookshop.org or your local bookstore!)

She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, by Helen Castor: In the tradition of Antonia Fraser, David Starkey, and Alison Weir, prize-winning historian Helen Castor delivers a compelling, eye-opening examination of women and power in England, witnessed through the lives of six women who exercised power against all odds—and one who never got the chance. Exploring the narratives of the Empress Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Margaret of Anjou, and other “she-wolves,” as well as that of the Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, Castor invokes a magisterial discussion of how much—and how little—has changed through the centuries.

The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, by Monica H. Green: The Trotula was the most influential compendium of women's medicine in medieval Europe. Scholarly debate has long focused on the traditional attribution of the work to the mysterious Trotula, said to have been the first female professor of medicine in eleventh- or twelfth-century Salerno, just south of Naples, then the leading center of medical learning in Europe. Yet as Monica H. Green reveals in her introduction to the first English translation ever based upon a medieval form of the text, the Trotula is not a single treatise but an ensemble of three independent works, each by a different author. To varying degrees, these three works reflect the synthesis of indigenous practices of southern Italians with the new theories, practices, and medicinal substances coming out of the Arabic world. Green here presents a complete English translation of the so-called standardized Trotula ensemble, a composite form of the texts that was produced in the midthirteenth century and circulated widely in learned circles. The work is now accessible to a broad audience of readers interested in medieval history, women's studies, and premodern systems of medical thought and practice.

Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds, by Dr. Natalie Zemon Davis: An engrossing study of Leo Africanus and his famous book, which introduced Africa to European readers. Al-Hasan al-Wazzan—born in Granada to a Muslim family that in 1492 went to Morocco, where he traveled extensively on behalf of the sultan of Fez--is known to historians as Leo Africanus, author of the first geography of Africa to be published in Europe (in 1550). He had been captured by Christian pirates in the Mediterranean and imprisoned by the pope, then released, baptized, and allowed a European life of scholarship as the Christian writer Giovanni Leone. In this fascinating new book, the distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial, and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him, and a superb interpretation of his extraordinary life and work. In Trickster Travels, Davis describes all the sectors of her hero's life in rich detail, scrutinizing the evidence of al-Hasan's movement between cultural worlds; the Islamic and Arab traditions, genres, and ideas available to him; and his adventures with Christians and Jews in a European community of learned men and powerful church leaders. In depicting the life of this adventurous border-crosser, Davis suggests the many ways cultural barriers are negotiated and diverging traditions are fused.

#books #history #book list

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vsplusonline · 4 years

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165 VIPs urge 20 economic powers for billions for Covid-19

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/165-vips-urge-20-economic-powers-for-billions-for-covid-19/

165 VIPs urge 20 economic powers for billions for Covid-19

Many former global leaders and other VIPs urged the world’s 20 major industrialized nations to approve $8 billion in emergency funding to speed the search for a vaccine, cure and treatment for Covid-19 and prevent a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

In an open letter to governments of the Group of 20 nations, the leaders, ministers, top executives and scientists also called for $35 billion to support countries with weaker health systems and especially vulnerable populations, and at least $150 billion for developing countries to fight the medical and economic crisis.

And they urged the international community to waive this year’s debt repayments from poorer countries, including $44 billion due from Africa.

The letter released Monday night urged coordinated action within the next few days to address our deepening global health and economic crises from Covid-19.

The communique from the G20 leaders’ summit on March 26 recognized the gravity and urgency of the crisis, the signatories said, but we now require urgent specific measures that can be agreed on with speed and at scale.

The letter noted the problems were inter-connected. The economic emergency will not be resolved until the health emergency is effectively addressed: the health emergency will not end simply by conquering the disease in one country alone, but by ensuring recovery from COVID-19 in all countries.

The group called for a global pledging conference, coordinated by a G20 task force, to commit resources to meet emergency needs.

All health systems even the most sophisticated and best funded are buckling under the pressures of the virus, it said.

Yet if we do nothing as the disease spreads in poorer African, Asian, and Latin American cities and in fragile communities which have little testing equipment, ventilators, and medical supplies; and where social distancing and even washing hands are difficult to achieve, the group warned, COVID-19 will persist there and re-emerge to hit the rest of the world with further rounds that will prolong the crisis.

The 165 signatories included former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, 92 former presidents and prime ministers, the current prime ministers of Ethiopia and Bangladesh, Sierra Leone’s president, philanthropist George Soros, former Irish president Mary Robinson, who chairs The Elders, and Graca Machel, the group’s deputy chair.

Others include former British Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and John Major, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, International Economic Association President Kaushik Basu, who was a World Bank chief economist, and Georgetown University Associate Professor Deus Bazira, co-director of the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact.

Instead of countries and localities competing for a share of the existing capacity, with the risk of spiking prices, the world should be vastly increasing capacity by supporting the World Health Organization in coordinating the production and procurement of medical supplies and technology to meet fully the worldwide demand, it said.

As for the economy, the group said, our aim should be to prevent a liquidity crisis turning into a solvency crisis, and a global recession becoming a global depression.

IndiaToday.in has plenty of useful resources that can help you better understand the coronavirus pandemic and protect yourself. Read our comprehensive guide (with information on how the virus spreads, precautions and symptoms), watch an expert debunk myths, check out our data analysis of cases in India, and access our dedicated coronavirus page. Get the latest updates on our live blog.

Watch India Today TV live here. Catch the latest TV debates and video reports here.

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shanteparadigm · 5 years

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Call for Proposals: #CiteBlackWomen

Call For Proposals: Feminist Anthropology Issue 2.1: #CiteBlackWomen Posted by Web Maeven | Monday, 12 December 2019 | AFA Blog, Call for Papers, News, Uncategorized Deadline: March 1, 2020 Guest Co-editor: Christen Smith http://afa.americananthro.org/category/call-for-papers/ In this issue, we explore the contributions of Black women scholars to the field of anthropology and beyond. Thinking through our critical traditions, we ask, what scholarship looks like when it foregrounds the thinking of those scholars who have historically been excluded from anthropology’s central conversations? How do Black women’s voices, in all of their diversity (trans, cis queer and non-queer) reshape our modes of theorizing, analyzing, and describing the worlds that anthropologists engage, both past and present? By centering the scholarly innovations of Black women, Feminist Anthropology seeks to challenge citational practices that have silenced, and appropriated the intellectual labors of Black women. Heeding the call of anthropologist Christen Smith who coined the #CiteBlackWomen hashtag in 2017, this issue engages Black women scholars who have been at the heart of the anthropological endeavor, and introduces new generations of anthropologists to the discipline through a lens that reexamines the center from its margins. We recognize that to discuss Black women primarily is not to exclude or ignore other voices, but to address the need to amplify unique experiences and histories carefully and without equivocation. We note the words of the Combahee River Collective: “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free, since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all systems of oppression.” To pay special attention to Black women is also to attend to the needs of all of us. As Christen Smith writes, “We must undo the toxic politics of erasing women’s voices across our society, especially in the academy. How can we rethink anthropology’s approach to theory, methodology, and pedagogy so that women of color are not faceless and voiceless? This includes other marginalized populations who have equally been erased from anthropological theory, like indigenous and non-white scholars from the global South.” The journal seeks original submissions across all fields of anthropology that speak to the generous plenitudes of Black women’s scholarly interventions. Archaeologists, linguists, cultural anthropologists and biological anthropologists might ask: How have Black women scholars and marginalized scholars sustained transnational scholarly conversations and how have these discourses and interventions evolved in time (Combahee River Collective; Faye V. Harrison, Chandra Talpade Mohanty; Christen Smith)? What happens to intersectionality (Kimberlé Crenshaw) and Black Feminist theorizing when it is mobilized for anthropological analysis across the fields (Moya Bailey; A. Lynn Bolles; Whitney Battle-Baptiste)? Where does abolitionist and fugitive scholarship lead us in examining the histories, presents and futures of institutions (Maya Berry et al; Brit Rusert; Savannah Shange)? What does anthropological ‘wake work’ look like (Christina Sharpe) in ethnography, language, archive, biology, and the material record? How has language interacted with cultural, biological and material practices to reproduce and resist racial, ethnic, and gendered politics (Jonathan Rosa; Ana Celia Zentella)? How have Black and indigenous scholars challenged anthropology’s approach to voicing kinship, maternity, girlhoods, and households (Cathy Cohen; Aimee Meredith Cox; Saidiya Hartman; Leith Mullings; Hortense Spillers; Mishauna Goeman)? What does the anthropology of religion have to gain from the centering of performance, movement and embodiment (N. Fadeke Castor; Zora Neale Hurston)? How do Black women scholars engage post-humanism; human-plant and human-animal relations; ecological thinking; and the anthropocene (Vanessa Agard-Jones; Octavia Butler; Fatimah Jackson et al.)? How do scholarly understandings of technology benefit from the interventions of scholars who center race, gender, sexuality and class (Ruha Benjamin; Alondra Nelson; Safiya Noble; Laura Wilkie)? How have Black women scholars brought attention to the tyrannies and potentialities of health and healthcare interventions as the work of kinship, development, and empire (Adia Benton; Deirdre Cooper Owen; Faye Harrison)? What methods have Black women scholars innovated, and how do these methodologies benefit the discipline (Dána-Ain Davis; Irma McLaurin)? How have feminist anthropologists grappled with citing sovereignty, queerness, and nationalisms, rethinking the politics of belonging (Audra Simpson; SA Smythe; Deborah Thomas)? We invite submissions that substantively engage Black women’s scholarly contributions and demonstrate their impact on anthropology, and demonstrate how these intellectual interventions “sustain, remix and innovate a lively and heterogeneous set of scholarly traditions,” (Davis and Mulla 2020) towards a richer, more insightful, undisciplined and/or inter-disciplined anthropology. Co-authored and dual lingual pieces are encouraged. If you are interested in submitting a dual lingual manuscript, please contact the editors for more instruction ([email protected] and [email protected]). Manuscripts can be submitted via the journal’s ScholarOne site in all submission categories. Please consult the author guidelines for further details. For full consideration to be included in the themed issue, please submit manuscripts by March 1, 2020. Works Cited Vanessa Agard-Jones. 2012. “What the Sands Remember,” GLQ 18(2 –3): 325-346. Moya Bailey. 2010. “They Aren’t Talking About Me….” The Crunk Feminist Collective. http://www.crunkfeministcollective.com/2010/03/14/they-arent-talking-about-me/ Whitney Battle-Baptiste. 2011. Black Feminist Archaeology. New York and London: Routledge University Press. Ruha Benjamin. 2019. Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge: Polity Press. Adia Benton. 2015. HIV Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone. Minneapolis and St. Paul: University of Minnesota Press. Maya Berry, Claudia Chávez Argüelles, Shanya Cordis, Sarah Ihmoud, Elizabeth Velásquez Estrada. 2017. “Toward a Fugitive Anthropology: gender, Race and Violence in the Field,” Cultural Anthropology. 32(4): 537-565. A. Lynne Bolles. 2001. “Seeking the Ancestors: Forging a Black Feminist Tradition in Anthropology,” in Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Praxis, Poetics, and Politics. I. McClaurin, ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 24-48. Octavia Butler. 1979. Kindred. New York: Doubleday. N. Fadeke Castor. 2017. Spiritual Citizenship: Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifá in Trinidad. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Cathy Cohen. 1997. “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics,” GLQ 3(4): 437-465. Combahee River Collective. 1977. “The Combahee River Collective Statement.” Deirdre Cooper Owens. 2017. Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. Aimee Meredith Cox. 2015. Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Kimberlé Crenshaw. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum, 139-167. Dána-Ain Davis. 2013. “Border Crossings: Intimacy and Feminist Activist Ethnography in the Age of Neoliberalism,” in D. Davis and C. Craven eds. Feminist Activist Ethnography: Counterpoints to Neoliberalism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Dána-Ain Davis and Sameena Mulla. 2020. “Feminist Epistemology and Methodology,” in C. McCallum, M. Fotta, S. Possoco eds. The Cambridge Handbook of Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mishauna Goeman. 2013. Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations. Minneapolis and St. Paul: University of Minnesota Press. Faye V. Harrison. 1997. Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further Towards an Anthropology of Liberation. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association. Faye V. Harrison. 1994. “Racial and Gender Inequalities in Health and Health Care,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 8(1): 90-95. Saidiya Hartman. 2007. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Zora Neale Hurston. 1938 (2009). Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. New York: Harper. Fatimah Jackson, Earl Bloch, Robert Jackson, James Chandler, Yong Kim and Floyd Malveaux. 1985. “Influence of Dietary Cyanide on Immunoglobin and Thiocyanate Levels in the Serum of Liberian Adults,” Journal of the National Medical Association. 77(10): 777-782. Irma McLaurin. 2001. Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Praxis, Poetics, and Politics. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Chandra Talpade Mohanty. 2003. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Leith Mullings. 1997. On Our Own Terms: Race, Class and Gender in the Lives of African American Women. New York: Routledge. Alondra Nelson. 2016. The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reconciliation and Reparations After the Genome. Boston: Beacon Press. Safiya Noble. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York University Press. Jonathan Rosa. 2019. Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad. Oxford University Press. Britt Rusert. 2017. Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture. New York and London: New York University Press. Savannah Shange. 2018. Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Christina Sharpe. 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Audra Simpson. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Christen Smith. Afroparadise: Blackness, Violence and Performance in Brazil. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. SA Smythe. 2018. “The Black Mediterranean and the Politics of Imagination,” Middle East Report. 286: 3-9. Hortense Spillers. 1987. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Diacritics. 17(2): 64-81. Deborah Thomas. 2019. Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Laura Wilkie. 2003. The Archaeology of Mothering: An African-American Midwife’s Tale. New York and London: Routledge. Ana Celia Zentella. 1997. Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. New York and London: Blackwell.

#cfp #Call for Papers #cite Black Women #Association for Feminist Anthropology #feminist #anthropology

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alicecpacheco · 5 years

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New Dental School Slated to be Destined for Joplin, Missouri

Sometimes I have information that I feel that I simply *must* share with those of you who are regular readers of the blog. Today is one of those times.

As most of you probably know, I’m a facts based guy. I love science and because of that, I tend to be very fact based. When it comes to reporting or doing clinical trials, I try as hard as I can to dig up facts.

However, what I’m about to tell you now, is based on unconfirmed, but incredibly reliable information. I have this information courtesy of a very well placed and reliable source, however the source has requested anonymity for this story. However, I will tell you that I would trust this source for this story. Their record is impeccable.

Anyway, you’ll soon be hearing of a new dental school that will be setup in the city of Joplin, Missouri. Now most of you will remember Joplin as the site of a monster EF-5 rated multiple vortex tornado that struck in the early evening of Sunday May 22, 2011. It decimated the town of 51,000.

Since that fateful night, Joplin has bounced back and continued to grow. Now, the city will be the site of the third dental school in the state of Missouri.

The school will be a subsidiary of Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences. About a year ago, I came across an article from the Joplin Globe where the potential of the school was discussed. Here is what they had to say:

The Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences is trying to decide whether to create a College of Dental Medicine in the Joplin area to serve the oral health needs of residents in Southwest Missouri, Southeast Kansas, Northeast Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas. The university, which has campuses in Kansas City and Joplin, announced last week that it has undertaken a feasibility study for the project that will explore regional needs, possible funding sources and locations, accreditation options and potential partnerships. Marc B. Hahn, president and CEO of KCU, said the decision to pursue a College of Dental Medicine stems from "significant" unmet oral health care needs in the region. According to information provided by KCU, most counties within a 125-mile radius of Joplin are designated as "dental health professional shortage areas" by the Health Resources and Services Administration. "The region around Joplin is really underserved when it comes to oral health care and dental services," he said. Hahn said KCU looks to build a full dental school with a four-year curriculum and approximately 100 students per class. Students who complete the program would be licensed dentists, he said. "The curriculum that we're starting to explore is one of a community-based, rural health model — similar to our medical school model in Joplin where the training is in the community," he said. "Our hope would be we could recruit students from the region, educate them in the region and then return them to the region." Hahn said he hopes to have the feasibility study completed within the upcoming academic year, with a decision made on whether to pursue the dental program in perhaps six to 12 months. The College of Dental Medicine would be a new venture for KCU, which currently consists of a College of Biosciences and a College of Osteopathic Medicine. Hahn said the program would complement the two existing colleges. "Oral health — and oral health problems — can worsen other medical problems," he said. "As we look at the need, we see it aligns very well with the medical school, especially with our focus toward rural health and access for the underserved." MSSU dental school It wasn't immediately clear how a College of Dental Medicine through KCU would impact plans for a satellite dental school on the campus of Missouri Southern State University, which would be operated jointly with the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Talks toward a dental school at MSSU in partnership with UMKC have been going on since about 2010. The universities jointly requested state money for the project in fiscal year 2017, with MSSU receiving $2 million and UMKC receiving $1.5 million. Most of that funding was subsequently withheld — with no money was awarded in the current fiscal year — so the project was suspended. But roughly 60 percent of MSSU's request for that project — about $1.2 million — is included in the university's 2019 budget, which was approved by the governing board on Thursday. The university has already completed the first of several phases to prepare for the installation of a satellite dental school, including freeing up some of the second floor of the Leon Health Sciences Building for the program. Alan Marble, president of Missouri Southern, said he had heard KCU's announcement of the feasibility study, but he hadn't yet had time to hold conversations with those involved in the MSSU-UMKC project to determine how to proceed. "I don't think we know yet" how the satellite dental school might be affected, he said. Hahn said KCU is poised to bring a dental school to the Joplin area if state funding for the MSSU-UMKC project falls through. "If the state of Missouri can identify the resources and our friends at MSSU and UMKC can come together to address the dental needs in the area, then we're certainly supportive of that. We're not interested in competing with them," he said. "However, if the state does balk again, we're going to be in a position to move forward because we believe the need is so significant in the community, and we believe we can address those needs." Hahn said that if KCU decides to pursue the College of Dental Medicine, partnerships with community members would likely be explored. "We would certainly be interested in collaborating with state institutions of higher education — MSSU or the UM System — to ascertain ways to better address the oral health needs of the community," he said. Shortage of dentists The Missouri Economic Research and Information Center projects an additional 780 dentists will be needed in the state by 2024, according to data provided by the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences.

Now the school will become a reality. I’m not sure of any dates, but expect to hear a formal announcement in the very near future...

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kirstenmacvitie-blog · 6 years

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Polio Case Detected In Mali, Country On ‘Higher Alert’.

India is a property where many lovely varieties of birds are actually found, be it local or even migrant. A Jefferson Area salesperson reportedly told employee from the Recreation Center in Louisville on Monday-- the very first day of in-person early voting in Georgia-- that roughly 40 black folks could not join the excursion after acquiring a problem coming from an unrevealed caller. He's edited 150 yodeling tracks, 114 of them remain in the Public Library of Our Lawmakers Videotaped Sound Referral Facility songs assortment, and also in December 2011 they got 16 video clips of some of his performances for their Motion Picture & Tv Division. Films occasionally function as reassuring desires but Movie Noir present a darkened globe where principles is not constantly basic and also physical violence could be a decrease to black in the end of No Country For Old Men proposes a getting up from a discomforting desire, talking to whether we can easily find comfort in a globe where The lord is silent and also brutality is code. While it is actually easy to understand that as a result of its own history, blackface is actually looked at discourteous as well as annoying, individuals may often tend to hop to the incorrect final thoughts when it comes to these happenings. I am a hillbilly vocalist from East Tennessee that loves to compose and carry out tunes concerning my enjoyable and mad lifestyle for y' all. In Africa, Nigeria is actually the country to watch this fourth. Probably the splendor of our nation and also the higher standard of staying our experts delight in today will certainly not be actually ours if the people who developed it had actually been actually spent a living wage. He came to be impressive in a lot of locations of management being a speaker for blog post restraint black The United States to the strong and also significant in this nation. Staff members because nation and also in Italy additionally resisted on Dark Friday in 2013. On the Hot Nation Songs study it raised 9-7 in its 31st framework. On 29 August 2016 he got the National Traditional C And W Affiliation 2016 Life-time Achievement Award at the 41st Annual Old Time Country Music Festival in LeMars, Iowa. Individuals who reside in backwoods of the United States are much more probably than city dwellers to smoke, be overweight, and also deal with a range of similar wellness problems, scientists claimed Tuesday. Liberia is among 3 nations, together with Guinea and Sierra Leone, that were actually ravaged by an epidemic that has killed around 11,000 folks because December 2013, much more than 500 of them medical care laborers. The character belonging to the United States individuals has actually carried out all that has been achieved; and it would possess done somewhat even more, if visit the up coming document authorities had certainly not in some cases got in its own technique. Your articles may be actually unpublished for policies violations, however they are still accessible to you in My Account At times, if our team discover a design of transgressions, each one of your articles might be actually hidden immediately.

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javiermoor4680-blog · 6 years

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Top 10 Wedding Ceremony Bands In Kansas City

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Herb Kansas City Missouri said he was "knocked woozy" defending on that perform. The 810 Sports Radio Dippin' Canines dog swim takes place from noon to four p.m. at The Springs Aquatic Center (9400 N. Congress, KCMO). Admission is $10 per canine. Kansas City Kansas Visit the Dippin' Dogs website for details. The final working day of the Ladies's Amateur of Kansas City concluded on Sunday at Swope Memorial Golfing Program in click the next webpage. The overnight leaders were Bailey Hopper, Anne Willman and Carmen Titus. The players faced stiff and gusty winds on Sunday on the tough championship course. "Last 7 days these trees were nearly bare. A powerful wind swept absent the dry leaves and now, with extensive watering, they're expanding new leaves," he stated. This nursery utilizes river birch, he continued, trees need much more water than other birch. 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kneestemcellss · 6 years

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B vitamins

B vitamins are a class of water-soluble vitamins that play important roles in cell metabolism. Though these vitamins share similar names, research shows that they are chemically distinct vitamins that often coexist in the same foods. In general, dietary supplements containing all eight are referred to as a vitamin B complex.

B vitamins are found in whole unprocessed foods. Processed carbohydrates such as sugar and white flour tend to have lower B vitamin than their unprocessed counterparts. For this reason, it is required by law in many countries (including the United States) that the B vitamins thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and folic acid be added back to white flour after processing. This is sometimes called “Enriched Flour” on food labels. B vitamins are particularly concentrated in meat such as turkey, tuna and liver. Good sources for B vitamins include legumes (pulses or beans), whole grains, potatoes, bananas, chili peppers, tempeh, nutritional yeast, brewer’s yeast, and molasses.

A popular way of increasing one’s vitamin B intake is through the use of dietary supplements. Because they are soluble in water, excess B vitamins are generally readily excreted, although individual absorption, use and metabolism may vary.

The elderly and athletes may need to supplement their intake of B12 and other B vitamins due to problems in absorption and increased needs for energy production. In cases of severe deficiency, B vitamins, especially B12, may also be delivered by injection to reverse deficiencies. Both type 1 and type 2 diabetics may also be advised to supplement thiamine based on high prevalence of low plasma thiamine concentration and increased thiamine clearance associated with diabetes. Also, Vitamin B9 (folic acid) deficiency in early embryo development has been linked to neural tube defects. Thus, women planning to become pregnant are usually encouraged to increase daily dietary folic acid intake and/or take a supplement.

Source: Wikipedia.

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#IFTTT #Leon Medical Centers Blog

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meetpositivesblog · 6 years

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Did You Know? HALF of all new STIs happen to people under the age of 25.

The following article Did You Know? HALF of all new STIs happen to people under the age of 25. was first published on: Meet Positives Dating Blog

HALF of all new STIs happen to people under the age of 25.

In a national survey of US Physicians, fewer than one-third routinely screened patients for STDs/STIs. People who have had sex should get tested from time since you can be infected with STD/STI without any signs or symptoms. Everyone with active sex life should undergo testing as part of a healthy sex life. However, national survey of US physicians, less than one-third said they routinely screened patients for STD/STI.So what do you need to know about getting tested?

First seen on: (https://www.buzzfeed.com/caseygueren/get-tested?utm_term=.odGmgdpXaL#.rtq8JnbNlL)

Image Credit

1. The most common symptom of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is feeling fine and having zero signs of a disease.

Reason #482 to get tested: Most infections come with no symptoms at all. So unless your genitals are psychic, you need regular screenings whenever you’re at risk. And just because an STI isn’t causing symptoms, that doesn’t mean it’s harmless. Untreated chlamydia and gonorrhea in cisgender women or trans men can lead to chronic pelvic pain, ectopic pregnancy, and even infertility.

2. HALF of all new STIs happen to people under the age of 25.

That’s huge considering this group makes up just a quarter of the sexually active population, according to a 2013 report from the CDC.

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3. You should START getting tested after your first sexual encounter — whenever and whatever that may be.

STIs can be spread through oral, anal, and vaginal sex — and sometimes just through skin-to-skin genital contact (which is the case with HPV and herpes) or sharing sex toys. So if you’re engaging in any activities that can result in transmission — even if you think your partner is STI-free — it’s time to talk to your doctor about which tests you should be getting.

4. If you’ve been exposed to an STI, it might take a little while for it to show up on a test.

Different STIs can take a matter of days or weeks to show up on a test, Dr. Peter Leone, medical director at the North Carolina HIV/STD Prevention and Control Branch, tells BuzzFeed Life. So keep that in mind when you’re getting tested (and when you’re scheduling an appointment). Plus, it can take up to 3 months to detect HIV depending on which test you get (more on that later).

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

5. You can get an STI test without your parents’ consent.

Minors are allowed to consent for their own health services for STIs, anywhere in the U.S., according to the CDC. That said, they cannot stop your private insurance company from sending an explanation of benefits or a medical bill to your parents if they are the primary insurance holders (and those forms typically list the tests you had). Still, talk to your doctor if you think you may be at risk for an STI and they should be able to help you make the best decision.

6. Your insurance should cover some or all of the costs for STI testing. But if they don’t, there are always cheap or free options out there.

Any screening recommendation from the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force that’s graded A or B must be covered by insurance (if you’re in the U.S.). These recommendations are pretty consistent with the ones from the CDC, which we’ll go over in detail here.

Your insurance might only cover annual screenings for certain STIs. But if you have symptoms or you’re at a higher risk, that would be considered an STI “test” rather than a “screening,” and if it’s coded correctly, your insurance should still cover it, says Leone. You can also find free or cheap testing at local health departments, health clinics, or Planned Parenthood, he says. You can also go to GetTested.cdc.gov to find affordable testing centers in your area.

7. Ideally, you want to get tested in between partners.

This way you’re able to approach a new partner with a clean slate. And if you do have an infection, you’re able to pinpoint when you got it and find out how to not pass it along to your next partner. If you have multiple partners or you’re switching partners more frequently than you can be tested, make sure to practice safer sex practices by using a barrier method every single time. And don’t assume that if you slipped up once with someone, the damage is already done and it’s not worth using a condom the next time. “It’s better to use a condom some of the time than none of the time,” says Leone.

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First, here are the most basic screening guidelines for cisgender men and women. Suggestions for trans individuals come next.

These recommendations for cisgender men and women (which means they identify with the gender they were assigned at birth), come from the 2010 CDC STD Treatment Guidelines. Keep in mind that your lifestyle, community, and unique sexual behaviors may mean that you should be screened more or less frequently. We’ll go into more detail about all that in a bit.

8. If you’re a woman under 25 and you have sex with men or women, you should get a chlamydia test and gonorrhea test every year.

Yes, that’s even if you haven’t switched partners. Why? Because the vast majority of chlamydia infections occur in women under 25 and it’s often completely symptomless, so it’s best to just cover your bases, says Leone. Also, most men aren’t getting screened for chlamydia, so if you have a male partner (even if you’re sureyou’re both monogamous), it’s still wise to be tested every year. And remember that sex isn’t just penis-in-vagina. This also includes oral sex, anal sex, the sharing of sex toys, etc.

9. If you’re a woman 25 or older AND you have either a new partner or multiple partners (of either gender), you should also get a chlamydia test and gonorrhea test every year.

So if you’ve hooked up with anyone new since your last test, this is your cue to get retested.

10. If you’re a man who has sex with men (MSM), you should be tested for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis at least once a year. If you have multiple partners or anonymous partners, you should be screened more often (at 3-month or 6-month intervals).

This includes testing for gonorrhea and chlamydia in the urethra for anyone who has insertive intercourse and in the rectum for anyone who has receptive anal intercourse, as well as testing for gonorrhea in the pharynx (in your mouth where your nose connects to your throat) for anyone who has receptive oral intercourse.

If you have multiple sex partners, or if your partner has multiple sex partners, it is recommended that you screen for these STIs more frequently. This might mean at 3-6 month intervals, so check with a doctor or health clinic to get a specific recommendation.

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

11. All men who have sex with men should get a baseline screening for hepatitis B if they are unvaccinated or if they aren’t sure if they’ve been vaccinated.

This is a blood test that will determine if you’re infected. In addition to screening, adults should receive hepatitis A and hepatitis B vaccines if they haven’t already. Hepatitis C screening is also recommended in HIV-positive MSM.

12. There are technically no STI screening guidelines for men who only have sex with women (aside from HIV screening) — but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should never get tested.

You should be tested any time one of your sexual partners has been diagnosed with an STI, Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for external medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), tells BuzzFeed Life. For instance, if your partner has trichomoniasis (a common STI caused by a parasite that’s often asymptomatic in men), you’ll want to get tested ASAP to make sure you don’t reinfect her. Remember, just because you don’t have symptoms, that doesn’t mean the infection is harmless.

13. There are also no specific guidelines for women who only have sex with women (WSW).

While there are no recommendations for more frequent STI screenings for WSW (as there are for MSM), there is also no evidence to suggest that WSW should screenless frequently (per the 2014 CDC STD Treatment Guidelines, which are still under consideration). So if a doctor says you don’t need to be screened for something based on your sexual orientation — even though you have certain risk factors or symptoms — don’t be afraid to speak up or find another provider.

14. EVERYONE should get an HIV test at least once.

The CDC recommends that everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 be tested at least once in their life. We’ll talk more about the different kinds of HIV tests in a little bit. For more information, check out the CDC guide to HIV testing.

15. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you ONLY need one HIV test in your whole lifetime.

If you change partners or have unprotected sex, you should probably be tested annually, suggests Leone. You should also be tested more frequently if you’re in a high-risk group, which could include any of the following: You’ve had sex with someone who might be HIV-positive, you’ve had sex with someone and you don’t know their HIV status, you have multiple partners, you’ve had sex with someone who might have multiple partners, you’re a man who has sex with men, you have a history of drug injection, you’re a commercial sex worker, you live in a community where HIV is particularly prevalent, etc.

16. If you’re a man who has sex with men, you should get an HIV test every year. If you have multiple partners or anonymous partners, you should be screened more often (at 3-6 month intervals).

Image Credit

17. Pregnant women should be tested for syphilis, HIV, chlamydia, and hepatitis B (and retested if necessary). They should also be screened for gonorrhea and hepatitis C if they are at risk.

You’re “at risk” for gonorrhea if you are under 25, if you’re over 25 but have new or multiple partners, if you live in a community where gonorrhea is common, if you’ve had gonorrhea before, if you’ve had other STIs, if you don’t use condoms consistently, if you’re a commercial sex worker, or if you use drugs. You’re “at risk” for hepatitis C if you have a history of drug-injection use or a history of blood transfusion or organ transplant before 1992.

Here’s what you need to know about testing for STIs if you’re a transgender man or woman, or if your partner is a transgender man or woman.

Transgender individuals have a gender that is different from what they were assigned at birth. Because gender identity is different than sexual orientation, it’s important to note that trans men and trans women may have sex with any gender. It’s also important to remember that some trans people have had gender confirmation surgery while others have not. All of these factors can influence which STI tests you should be getting and how frequently you should be getting them.

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

18. Unfortunately, the CDC does not have concrete screening guidelines for trans people.

However, it’s possible to assess your risk by considering your genital anatomy, your partner’s genital anatomy, your sexual behaviors, and other outside risk factors. “It should come down to organs and risk,” Dr. Madeline Deutsch, clinical director at theCenter of Excellence for Transgender Health, tells BuzzFeed Life. “Providers should be talking about who you are having sex with, what’s going where, and what are the circumstances that surround that sexual behavior.”

For instance, a trans man with a vagina should get

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ascendingmatrix · 7 years

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THE PENTAGON BIO-WEAPONS

Posted by M M | Jan 17, 2018 | 2018, Conspiracy, Cabal, and Government, Daily Blog, Government Laws, Policies, Politicians, Military, Military

SOUTH FRONT

DilyanaGaytandzhieva is a Bulgarian investigative journalist and Middle East Correspondent. Over the last two years she has published a series of revealed reports on weapons smuggling. In the past year she came under pressure from the Bulgarian National Security Agency and was fired from her job in the Bulgarian newspaper Trud Daily without explanation. Despite this, Dilyana continues her investigations. Her current report provides an overview of Pentagon’s vigour in the development of biological weapons.

Twitter/@dgaytandzhieva

The US Army regularly produces deadly viruses, bacteria and toxins in direct violation of the UN Convention on the prohibition of Biological Weapons. Hundreds of thousands of unwitting people are systematically exposed to dangerous pathogens and other incurable diseases. Bio warfare scientists using diplomatic cover test man-made viruses at Pentagon bio laboratories in 25 countries across the world. These US bio-laboratories are funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under a $ 2.1 billion military program– Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), and are located in former Soviet Union countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa.

The Lugar Center, Republic of Georgia

The US Army has been deployed to Vaziani Military Air Base, 17 km away from the Pentagon bio-laboratory at The Lugar Center.

Georgia is a testing ground for bioweapons

The Lugar Center is the Pentagon bio laboratory in Georgia. It is located just 17 km away from the US Vaziani military airbase in the capital Tbilisi. Tasked with the military program are biologists from the US Army Medical Research Unit-Georgia (USAMRU-G) along with private contractors. The Bio-safety Level 3 Laboratory is accessible only to US citizens with security clearance. They are accorded diplomatic immunity under the 2002 US-Georgia Agreement on defense cooperation.

The USA-Georgia agreement accords diplomatic status to the US military and civilian personnel (including diplomatic vehicles), working on the Pentagon program in Georgia.

Information obtained from the US federal contracts registry clarifies some of the military activities at The Lugar Center – among them research on bio- agents (anthrax, tularemia) and viral diseases (e.g. Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever), and the collection of biological samples for future experiments.

Pentagon contractors produce bio agents under diplomatic cover

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has outsourced much of the work under the military program to private companies, which are not held accountable to Congress, and which can operate more freely and move around the rule of law. US civilian personnel performing work at The Lugar Center have also been given diplomatic immunity, although they are not diplomats. Hence, private companies can perform work, under diplomatic cover, for the US government without being under the direct control of the host state – in this case the Republic of Georgia. This practice is often used by the CIA to provide cover for its agents.

Three private American companies work at the US bio-laboratory in Tbilisi – CH2M Hill, Battelle and Metabiota. In addition to the Pentagon, these private contractors perform biological research for the CIA and various other government agencies.

CH2M Hill has been awarded $341.5 million DTRA contracts under the Pentagon’s program for bio-laboratories in Georgia, Uganda, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan, South East Asia. Half of this sum ($161.1 million), being allocated to The Lugar Center, under the Georgian contract.

According to CH2M Hill, the US Company has secured biological agents and employed former bio warfare scientists at The Lugar Center. These are scientists who are working for another American company involved in the military program in Georgia – Battelle Memorial Institute.

Battelle as a $59 million subcontractor at Lugar Center has extensive experience in research on bio-agents, as the company has already worked on the US Bio-weapons Program under 11 previous contracts with the US Army (1952-1966).

Source: US Army Activities in the US, Biological Warfare Programs, vol. II, 1977, p. 82

The private company performs work for the Pentagon’s DTRA bio laboratories in Afghanistan, Armenia, Georgia, Uganda, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. Battelle conducts research, development, testing, and evaluation using both highly toxic chemicals and highly pathogenic biological agents for a wide range of US government agencies. It has been awarded some $2 billion federal contracts in total and ranks 23 on the Top 100 US government contractors list.

The CIA-Battelle Project Clear Vision

Project Clear Vision (1997 and 2000), a joint investigation by the CIA and the Battelle Memorial Institute, under a contract awarded by the Agency, reconstructed and tested a Soviet-era anthrax bomblet in order to test its dissemination characteristics. The project’s stated goal was to assess bio-agents dissemination characteristics of bomblets. The clandestine CIA-Battelle operation was omitted from the US Biological Weapons Convention declarations submitted to the UN.

Anthrax spores under microscope

Top Secret Experiments

Battelle has operated a Top Secret Bio laboratory (National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center – NBACC) at Fort Detrick, Maryland under a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contract for the last decade. The company has been awarded a $344.4 million federal contract (2006 – 2016) and another $17.3 million contract (2015 -2026) by DHS.

NBACC is classified as a US Top Secret facility. Photo Credit: DHS

Amongst the secret experiments, performed by Battelle at NBACC, are: Assessment of powder dissemination technology ; Assessment of hazard posed by aerosolized toxins and Assessment of virulence of B. Pseudomallei (Meliodosis) as a function of aerosol particle in non-human primates. Melioidosis has the potential to be developed as a biological weapon, hence, it is classed as a category B. Bioterrorism Agent. B. Pseudomallei was studied by the US as a potential bioweapon in the past.

Besides the military experiments at the Lugar Center in Georgia, Battelle has already produced bioterrorism agents at the Biosafety Level 4 NBACC Top Secret Laboratory at Fort Detrick in the US. A NBACC presentation lists 16 research priorities for the lab. Amongst them to characterize classical, emerging and genetically engineered pathogens for their BTA (biological threat agent) potential; assess the nature of nontraditional, novel and non-endemic induction of disease from potential BTA and to expand aerosol-challenge testing capacity for non-human primates.

Scientists engineer pathogens at the NBACC lab. Source: NBACC

Pentagon biolabs at the epicenter of the Ebola crisis

The US Company Metabiota Inc. has been awarded $18.4 million federal contracts under the Pentagon’s DTRA program in Georgia and Ukraine for scientific and technical consulting services.

Metabiota services include global field-based biological threat research, pathogen discovery, outbreak response and clinical trials.

Metabiota Inc. had been contracted by the Pentagon to perform work for DTRA before and during the Ebola crisis in West Africa and was awarded $3.1 million (2012-2015) for work in Sierra Leone – one of the countries at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.

Metabiota worked on a Pentagon’s project at the epicenter of the Ebola crisis, where three US biolabs are situated.

A July 17, 2014 report drafted by the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium, accused Metabiota Inc. of failing to abide by an existing agreement on how to report test results and for bypassing the Sierra Leonean scientists working there. The report also raised the possibility that Metabiota was culturing blood cells at the lab, something the report said was dangerous, as well as misdiagnosing healthy patients. All of those allegations were denied by Metabiota.

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2011,The Lugar Center, Andrew C. Weber (on the right) – US Assistant Secretary of Defense (2009-2014), US DoD Deputy Coordinator for Ebola Response (2014-2015), is currently a Metabiota ( the US contractor) employee.

Military Experiments on biting insects

Entomological warfare is a type of biological warfare that uses insects to transmit diseases. The Pentagon has allegedly performed such entomological tests in Georgia and Russia.

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Biting Flies in Georgia

In 2014 The Lugar Center was equipped with an insect facility and launched a project “Raising Awareness about Barcoding of Sand Flies in Georgia and Caucasus”. The project covered a larger geographic area outside of Georgia – Caucasus. In 2014-2015 Phlebotomine sand fly species were collected under another project “Surveillance Work on Acute Febrile Illness” and all (female) sand flies were tested to determine their infectivity rate. A third project, also including sand flies collection, studied the characteristics of their salivary glands.

A biting fly in a bathroom in Tbilisi. Flies in Georgia

As a result Tbilisi has been infested with biting flies since 2015. These biting insects live indoors, in bathrooms, all year long, which was not the typical behaviour of these species in Georgia previously (normally the Phlebotomine fly season in Georgia is exceptionally short – from June to September). Local people complain of being bitten by these newly appeared flies while naked in their bathrooms. They also have a strong resistance to cold and can survive even in the sub-zero temperatures in the mountains.

Biting Flies in Dagestan, Russia

Since the start of the Pentagon project in 2014 flies similar to those in Georgia have appeared in neighboring Dagestan (Russia). According to local people, they bite and cause rashes. Their breeding habitats are house drains.

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Flies in Georgia (on the left). The same fly in Dagestan (on the right)

Flies from the Phlebotomine family carry dangerous parasites in their saliva which they transmit through a bite to humans. The disease, which these flies carry, is of high interest to the Pentagon. In 2003 during the US invasion of Iraq American soldiers were severely bitten by sand flies and contracted Leishmoniasis. The disease is native to Iraq and Afghanistan and if left untreated the acute form of Leishmoniasis can be fatal.

A 1967 US Army report “Arthropods of medical importance in Asia and the European USSR” lists all local insects, their distribution and the diseases that they carry. Biting flies, which live in drains, are also listed in the document. Their natural habitats, though, are the Philippines, not Georgia or Russia.

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Source: “Arthropods of medical importance in Asia and the European USSR”, US Army report, 1967

Operation Whitecoat: Infected flies tested to bite humans

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In 1970 and 1972, Sand Fly Fever tests were performed on humans according to a declassified US Army report – US Army Activities in the US, Biological Warfare Programs, 1977, vol. II, p. 203.During operation Whitecoat volunteers were exposed to bites by infected sand flies. Operation Whitecoat was a bio-defense medical research program carried out by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland between 1954 and 1973.

Despite the official termination of the US bio-weapons program, in 1982 USAMRIID performed an experiment if sand flies and mosquitoes could be vectors of Rift Valley Virus, Dengue, Chikungunya and Eastern Equine Encephalitis – viruses, which the US Army researched for their potential as bio-weapons.

Killer Insects

A. Aegypti

The Pentagon has a long history in using insects as vectors for diseases. According to a partially declassified 1981 US Army report, American bio warfare scientists carried out a number of experiments on insects. These operations were part of the US Entomological Warfare under the Program for Biological Weapons of the US.

The Pentagon: How to kill 625,000 people for just $0.29 cost per deat

A US Army report in 1981 compared two scenarios – 16 simultaneous attacks on a city by A. Aegypti mosquitoes, infected with Yellow Fever, and Tularemia aerosol attack, and assesses their effectiveness in cost and casualties.

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Operation Big Itch: Field tests were performed to determine coverage patterns and survivability of the tropical rat flea Xenopsylla cheopis for use as a disease vector in biological warfare.

Operation Big Buzz: 1 million A. Aegypti mosquitoes were produced, 1/3 were placed in munitions and dropped from aircraft, or dispersed on the ground. The mosquitoes survived the airdrop and actively sought out human blood.

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Source: Evaluation of Entomological Warfare as a potential Danger to the US and European NATO nations, US Army, March 1981 Report

Operation May Day: Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes were dispersed through ground based methods in Georgia, USA, during a US Army operation codenamed May Day.

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Parts of the 1981 US Army report such as the “Mass production of Aedes Aegypti” have not been declassified, potentially meaning that the project is still ongoing.

Aedes Aegypti, also known as yellow fever mosquito, have been widely used in US military operations. The same species of mosquitoes are alleged to be the vectors of dengue, chikungunya and the Zika virus, which causes genetic malformations in newborns

Operation Bellweather

The US Army Chemical Research and Development Command, Biological Weapons Branch, studied outdoor mosquito biting activity in a number of field tests at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, in 1960. Virgin female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which had been starved, were tested upon troops out in the open air.

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For reference: Outdoor Mosquito Biting Activity Studies, Project Bellweather I, 1960, Technical Report, US Army, Dugway Proving Ground

Military Experiments with Tropical Mosquitoes and Ticks in Georgia

Such species of mosquitoes and fleas (studied in the past under the US Entomological Warfare Program) have also been collected in Georgia and tested at The Lugar Center.

Under the DTRA project “Virus and Other Arboviruses in Georgia” in 2014 the never-before-seen tropical mosquito Aedes albopictus was detected for the first time and after decades (60 years) the existence of Aedes Aegypti mosquito was confirmed in West Georgia.

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Aedes Albopictus is a vector of many viral pathogens, Yellow fever virus, Dengue, Chikungunya and Zika.

These tropical mosquitoes Aedes Albopictus having never been seen before in Georgia, have also been detected in neighboring Russia (Krasnodar) and Turkey, According to data provided by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Their spread is unusual for this part of the world.

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Aedes Aegypti Mosquitoes have been distributed only in Georgia, Southern Russia and Northern Turkey. They were detected for the first time in 2014 after the start of the Pentagon program at The Lugar Center.

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Under another DTRA project “Epidemiology and Ecology of Tularemia in Georgia” (2013-2016) 6,148 ground ticks were collected ; 5,871 were collected off the cattle and 1,310 fleas and 731 ticks were caught. In 2016 a further 21 590 ticks were collected and studied at The Lugar Center.

Anthrax Outbreak in Georgia and NATO Human Trials

In 2007 Georgia ended its policy of having compulsory annual livestock anthrax vaccination. As a result, the morbidity rate of the disease reached its peak in 2013. The same year NATO started human based anthrax vaccine tests at The Lugar Center in Georgia.

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In 2007 despite the anthrax outbreak the Georgian government terminated the compulsory vaccination for 7 years, 2013 saw NATO start human trials on a new anthrax vaccine in Georgia.

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Pentagon Research on Russian Anthrax

Anthrax is one of the bio agents weaponized by the US Army in the past. Despite the Pentagon’s claims that its program is only defensive, there are facts to the contrary. In 2016 at The Lugar Center American scientists carried out research on the “Genome Sequence of the Soviet/Russian Bacillus anthracis Vaccine Strain 55-VNIIVViM”, which was funded by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) Cooperative Biological Engagement Program in Tbilisi, and administered by Metabiota (the US contractor under the Pentagon program in Georgia).

In 2017 the DTRA funded further research – Ten Genome Sequences of Human and Livestock Isolates of Bacillus anthracis from the Country of Georgia, which was performed by USAMRU-G at The Lugar Center.

34 people intentionally infected with Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) in Georgia

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is caused by infection through a tick-borne virus (Nairovirus). The disease was first characterized in Crimea in 1944 and given the name Crimean hemorrhagic fever. It was then later recognized in 1969 as the cause of illness in Congo, thus resulting in the current name of the disease. In 2014 34 people became infected (among which a 4-year old child) with CCHF. 3 of which died. The same year Pentagon biologists studied the virus in Georgia under the DTRA project “Epidemiology of febrile illnesses caused by Dengue viruses and other Arboviruses in Georgia”. The project included tests on patients with fever symptoms and the collection of ticks, as possible vectors of CCHV for laboratory analysis.

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33 people became infected with CCHF, 3 of them died in Georgia.

Source: NCDC-Georgia

The cause of the CCHF outbreak in Georgia is still unknown. According to the local Veterinary Department report, only one tick from all of the collected species from the infected villages tested positive for the disease. Despite the claims of the local authorities that the virus was transmitted to humans from animals, all animal blood samples were negative too. The lack of infected ticks and animals is inexplicable given the sharp increase of CCHF human cases in 2014, meaning that the outbreak was not natural and the virus was spread intentionally.

In 2016 another 21 590 ticks were collected for DNA database for future studies at The Lugar Center under the Pentagon project “Assessing the Seroprevalence and Genetic Diversity of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus (CCHFV) and Hantaviruses in Georgia”.

Symptoms of CCHF

Military bio-lab blamed for deadly CCHF outbreak in Afghanistan

237 cases of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) have also been reported across Afghanistan, 41 of which were fatal as of December 2017. According to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Health most of the cases have been registered in the capital Kabul where 71 cases have been reported with 13 fatalities, and in the province of Herat near the border with Iran (67 cases).

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Afghanistan is one of 25 countries across the world with Pentagon bio-laboratories on their territory. The project in Afghanistan is part of the US bio-defense program – Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), which is funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The DTRA contractors, working at The Lugar Center in Georgia, CH2M Hill and Battelle have also been contracted for the program in Afghanistan. CH2M Hill has been awarded a $10.4 million contract (2013-2017). The Pentagon contractors in Afghanistan and Georgia are the same and so are the diseases which are spreading among the local population in both countries.

Why the Pentagon collects and studies bats

Bats are allegedly the reservoir hosts to the Ebola Virus , Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and other deadly diseases. However, the precise ways these viruses are transmitted to humans are currently unknown. Numerous studies have been performed under the DTRA Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP) in a search for deadly pathogens of military importance in bats.

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221 bats were euthanized at the Lugar Center for research purposes in 2014.

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Bats have been blamed for the deadly Ebola outbreak in Africa (2014-2016). However, no conclusive evidence of exactly how the virus “jumped” to humans has ever been provided, which raises suspicions of intentional and not natural infection.

Engineering deadly viruses is legal in the US

MERS-CoV is thought to originate from bats and spread directly to humans and/or camels. However, like Ebola, the precise ways the virus spreads are unknown.

1,980 cases with 699 deaths were reported in 15 countries across the world (as of June 2017) caused by MERS-CoV.

3 to 4 out of every 10 patients reported with MERS have died. Source: WHO

MERS-CoV is one of the viruses that have been engineered by the US and studied by the Pentagon, as well as Influenza and SARS. Confirmation of this practice is Obama’s 2014 temporary ban on government funding for such “dual-use” research. The moratorium was lifted in 2017 and experiments have continued. Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens (PPPs) experiments are legal in the US.

Such experiments aim to increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens.

Tularemia as Bioweapon

Tularemia, also known as Rabbit Fever, is classified as a bioterrorism agent and was developed in the past as such by the US. However, the Pentagon’s research on tularemia continues, as well as on possible vectors of the bacteria such as ticks and rodents which cause the disease. The DTRA has launched a number of projects on Tularemia along with other especially dangerous pathogens in Georgia. Especially Dangerous Pathogens (EDPs), or select agents, represent a major concern for the public health globally. These highly pathogenic agents have the potential to be weaponized with proof of their military importance seen through the following Pentagon projects: Epidemiology and Ecology of Tularemia in Georgia (2013-2016) (60 000 vectors were collected for strain isolates and genome research); Epidemiology of Human Tularemia in Georgia and Human Disease Epidemiology and Surveillance of Especially Dangerous Pathogens in Georgia (study of select agents among patients with undifferentiated fever and hemorrhagic fever/septic shock).

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F. Tularensis is a highly infectious bacterium and has the potential to be weaponized for use through aerosol attacks.

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Tularemia is one of the bio-weapons that the US Army developed in the past.

Source: 1981 US Army Report

Pentagon bio-laboratories spread diseases in Ukraine

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The DoD Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has funded 11 bio-laboratories in the former Soviet Union Country Ukraine, bordering on Russia.

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The US military program is sensitive information

Ukraine has no control over the military bio-laboratories on its own territory. According to the 2005 Agreement between the US DoD and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine the Ukrainian government is prohibited from public disclosure of sensitive information about the US program and Ukraine is obliged to transfer to the US Department of Defense (DoD) dangerous pathogens for biological research. The Pentagon has been granted access to certain state secrets of Ukraine in connection with the projects under their agreement.

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Biowarfare scientists under diplomatic cover

Among the set of bilateral agreements between the US and Ukraine is the establishment of the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU) – an International organization funded mainly by the US government which has been accorded diplomatic status. The STCU officially supports projects of scientists previously involved in the Soviet biological weapons program. Over the past 20 years the STCU has invested over $285 million in funding and managing some 1,850 projects of scientists who previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction.

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The US personnel in Ukraine work under diplomatic cover.

364 Ukrainians died from Swine Flu

One of the Pentagon laboratories is located in Kharkiv, where in January 2016 at least 20 Ukrainian soldiers died from Flu-like virus in just two days with 200 more being hospitalized. The Ukrainian government did not report on the dead Ukrainian soldiers in Kharkiv. As of March 2016 364 deaths have been reported across Ukraine (81.3 % caused by Swine Flu A (H1N1) pdm09 – the same strain which caused the world pandemic in 2009).

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According to DPR intelligence information the US bio lab in Kharkiv leaked the deadly virus.

Police investigate infection with incurable disease

A highly suspicious Hepatitis A infection spread rapidly in just few months across South East Ukraine where most of the Pentagon biolabs are located.

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37 people have been hospitalized for Hepatitis A in the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv as of January 2018. Local police have launched an investigation into “infection with human immunodeficiency virus and other incurable diseases”. Three years ago more than 100 people in the same city became infected with Cholera. Both diseases are alleged to have spread through contaminated drinking water.

In the summer of 2017 60 people with Hepatitis A were admitted to hospital in the city of Zaporizhia, the cause of this outbreak is still unknown.

In the Odessa region, 19 children from an orphanage were hospitalized for hepatitis A in June 2017.

29 cases of Hepatitis A were reported in Kharkiv in November 2017. The virus was isolated in contaminated drinking water. One of the Pentagon bio-labs is located in Kharkiv which was blamed for the deadly Flu outbreak a year ago which claimed the lives of 364 Ukrainians.

Ukraine and Russia hit by new highly virulent cholera infection

In 2011 Ukraine was hit by a cholera outbreak. 33 patients were reportedly hospitalized for severe diarrhea. A second outbreak struck the country in 2014 when more than 800 people all across Ukraine were reported to have contracted the disease. In 2015 at least 100 new cases were registered in the city of Mykolaiv alone.

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A new highly virulent variant of the cholera agent Vibrio cholera, with a high genetic similarity to the strains reported in Ukraine, hit Moscow in 2014. According to a 2014 Russian Research Anti-Plaque Institute genetic study the cholera strain isolated in Moscow was similar to the bacteria which caused the epidemic in neighboring Ukraine.

Southern Research Institute one of the US contractors working at the bio-laboratoriesin Ukraine, has projects on Cholera, as well as on Influenza and Zika – all pathogens of military importance to the Pentagon.

Along with Southern Research Institute, two other private American companies operate military bio-labs in Ukraine – Black&Veatch and Metabiota.

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Black & Veatch Special Project Corp. was awarded $198.7 million DTRA contracts to build and operate bio-laboratories in Ukraine (under two 5-year contracts in 2008 and 2012 totaling $128.5 million), as well as in Germany, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Thailand, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Armenia.

Metabiota has been awarded a $18.4 million federal contract under the program in Georgia and Ukraine. This US company was also contracted to perform work for the DTRA before and during the Ebola crisis in West Africa, the company was awarded $3.1 million (2012-2015) for work in Sierra Leone .

Southern Research Institute has been a prime subcontractor under the DTRA program in Ukraine since 2008. The company was also a prime Pentagon contractor in the past under the US Biological Weapons Program for research and development of bio-agents with 16 contracts between 1951 and 1962.

Source: US Army Activities in the US, Biological Warfare Programs, vol. II, 1977, p. 82

Soviet Defector produced anthrax for the Pentagon

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Southern Research Institute was also a subcontractor on a Pentagon program for anthrax research in 2001. The prime contractor being Advanced Biosystems, whose president at that time was Ken Alibek (a former Soviet microbiologist and biological warfare expert from Kazakhstan who defected to the US in 1992).

Bacillus anthracis, magnified more than 12,000 times

Ken Alibek

Ken Alibek was the First Deputy Director of Biopreparat, where he oversaw a program for biological weapon facilities and was the Soviet Union’s main expert on anthrax. After his defection to the US, he was engaged on Pentagon research projects.

$250 000 for lobbying Jeff Sessions for “research for US intelligence”

Southern Research Institute lobbied the US Congress and US Department of State hard for “issues related to research and development for US intelligence” and “defense related research and development”. The lobbying activities coincided with the start of the Pentagon projects on bio-labs in Ukraine and other former Soviet states.

The company paid $ 250 000 for lobbying the then Senator Jeff Sessions in 2008-2009 (currently the US Attorney General appointed by Donald Trump), when the institute was awarded a number of federal contracts.

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US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, US Senator from Alabama (1997-2017)

Watson Donald

For a 10-year period (2006-2016) Southern Research Institute paid $1.28 million for lobbying the US Senate, House of Representatives , the State Department and the Department of Defense (DoD). Senator Jeff Sessions’ aide on Capitol Hill – Watson Donald, is now a Senior Director at Southern Research Institute.

Police investigate Botulism toxin poisoning in Ukraine

115 Botulism cases, with 12 deaths, were reported in Ukraine in 2016.

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In 2017 the Ukrainian Ministry of Health confirmed a further 90 new cases, with 8 deaths, of botulinum toxin poisoning (one of the most poisonous biological substances known). According to the local health authorities, the cause of the outbreak was food poisoning into which police launched an investigation .

The Ukrainian government stopped supplying antitoxin in 2014 and no botulism vaccines in stock were available during the 2016-2017 outbreak.

Botulism is a rare and extremely dangerous illness caused by a toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum.

1 gm of the toxin can kill as many as 1 million people

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Botulinum neurotoxin poses a major bio-weapon threat because of its extreme potency, ease of production and transport. It causes muscles paralyses, respiratory failure and ultimately death if not treated immediately. A single gram of crystalline toxin, evenly dispersed and inhaled can kill more than one million people. It could be disseminated via aerosol, or by contamination of water and/ or food supplies.

The Pentagon produces live Viruses, Bacteria & Toxins

Botulinum Toxin was tested as a bio-weapon by the US Army in the past, as well as Anthrax, Brucella and Tularemia. Although the US bio-weapons program was officially terminated in 1969 documents show that the military experiments have never ended. Presently the Pentagon produces and tests live bio- agents at the same military facility as it did in the past – Dugway Proving Ground.

Current Field Tests

Source: Capabilities Report 2012, West Desert Test Center

Past Field Tests

Source: 1977 US Army Report, p. 135

Bioweapons factory in the US

The US Army produces and tests bio-agents at a special military facility located at Dugway Proving Ground ( West Desert Test Center, Utah), as proven in a 2012 US Army Report. The facility is overseen by the Army Test and Evaluation Command.

The Life Sciences Division (LSD) at Dugway Proving Ground is tasked with the production of bio-agents. According to the Army report, scientists from this division produce and test aerosolized bio-agents at Lothar Saloman Life Sciences Test Facility (LSTF).

Photo Credit: Dugway Proving Ground

Lothar Saloman Life Sciences Test Facility (LSTF) where bio-terrorism agents are produced and aerosolized.

Source: Capabilities Report 2012, West Desert Test Center

Biological Agents produced by the US Army at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, USA

The Life Sciences Division consists of an Aerosol Technology branch and a Microbiology Branch. The Aerosol Technology Branch aerosolizes biological agents and simulants. The Microbiology branch produces toxins, bacteria, viruses and agent-like organisms which are used in chamber and field testing.

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The fermentation laboratories at the Life Sciences Test Facility grow bacteria in fermentors ranging from a small 2 L to a large 1500 L system. The fermentors are tailored specifically to the requirements of the microorganism that is being engineered – pH, temperature, light, pressure, and nutrient concentrations that give the microorganism optimal growth rates.

A large 1500 L fermentator. Photos credit: Dugway Proving Ground

A post-production laboratory dries and mills test materials. Photos credit: Dugway Proving Ground

After the bio-agents are produced, the scientists challenge them at containment aerosol chambers.

Technicians disseminate live biological agents for identification sensitivity tests. Photos Credit: Dugway Proving Ground

Aerosol experiments with Botulinum Neurotoxin and Anthrax

Documents prove that the US Army produces, possesses and tests aerosols of the most lethal toxin in the world – Botulinum Neurotoxin. In 2014 the Department of the Army purchased 100 mg of Botulinum Toxin from Metabiologics for tests at Dugway Proving Ground.

The experiments date back to 2007 when an unspecified quantity of the toxin was procured to the Department of the Army by the same company – Metabiologics. According to the 2012 West Desert Test Center Report, the military facility performs tests with Botulinum Neurotoxin Aerosol, as well as with aerosolized Anthrax, Yersinia pestis, and Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus (VEE).

Source: Capabilities Report 2012, West Desert Test Center

Outdoor field test programs at Dugway Proving Ground

US Army documents and photos show that the Pentagon has developed various dissemination methods for bioterrorism attacks including by explosives.

Source: Capabilities Report 2012, West Desert Test Center

Dissemination of contaminants for biological/chemical tests. Photo credit: Dugway Proving Ground

Liquid Dissemination. Photos Credit: Dugway Proving Ground

Powder Dissemination. Photos Credit: Dugway Proving Ground

Dissemination on the test grid. Photos Credit: Dugway Proving Ground

The US Army report lists numerous dissemination techniques including by bio-aerosol sprayers. Such sprayers called Micronair disseminators have already been developed by the US Army and tested at Dugway Proving Ground. According to the documents, they can be vehicle-mounted, or worn as a backpack, with a pump system which can be fitted to the unit to increase the accuracy of the release. Micronair sprayers can release 50 to 500 mL of bio-liquid simulant per minute from 12 L tanks.

Aerosol Sprayers. Photo credit: Dugway Proving Ground

The US stole bacteria from Saddam Hussein’s bio weapons factory

Bacillus thuringiensis is an insect pathogen that is widely used as a bio-pesticide. B. thuringiensis (BT) Al Hakam was collected in Iraq by the UN Special Commission led by the US in 2003. It is named after Al Hakam – Iraq’s bio-weapons production facility. Apart from Pentagon field tests, this bacterium is also used in the US for the production of GM corn, resistant to pests. Photos posted by the CIA prove that the bacteria was collected by the US in Iraq. According to the CIA, the vials containing bio-pesticide, were recovered from an Al Hakam scientist’s home.

CIA: A total of 97 vials-including those with labels consistent with the al Hakam cover stories of single-cell protein and bio-pesticides, as well as strains that could be used to produce BW agents were recovered from a scientist’s residence in Iraq in 2003.

Photo Credit: CIA

Bacillus thuringiensis

Information from the US federal contracts registry shows that the Pentagon performs tests using the bacteria stolen from Saddam Hussein’s bio-weapons factory in Iraq.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) federal project for laboratory analysis and field tests with bacteria. Source: govtribe.com

The tests are performed on Kirtland Air Force Base (Kirtland is the home of the Air Force Materiel Command’s Nuclear Weapons Center). Here weapons are being tested, meaning that the field tests with biological simulants (bacteria) also fall into this group.

The DTRA contractor on this project – Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute (LBERI), operates an Animal Bio-safety 3 Level (ABSL-3) laboratory which has Select Agent status. The facility is designed to conduct bioaerosol studies. The company has been awarded a 5-year contract for field tests with biological simulants at Kirtland Air Force Base.

Photo Credit: Kirtland Air Force Base. Photo credit: Dugway Proving Ground

Some of the tests are performed in a wind tunnel. Photo credit: Dugway Proving Ground

Field tests with Biological Simulants (bacteria)

What the Pentagon is now doing is exactly what it did in the past, meaning that its bio-weapons program was never terminated. The US Army performed 27 field tests with such biological simulants, involving the public domain from1949 to 1968, when President Nixon officially announced the end of the program.

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Source: US Army Activities in the US, Biological Warfare Programs, vol. II, 1977, p. 125-126

Field tests in Chechnya

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which runs the US military program at the Lugar Center in Georgia, is alleged to have already performed field tests with an unknown substance in Chechnya, Russia. In the spring of 2017 local citizens reported on a drone disseminating white powder close to the Russian border with Georgia. Neither the Georgian border police, nor the US personnel operating on the Georgia-Russia border, commented on this information.

$9.2 million US military project on Russia-Georgia border

DTRA has full access to the Russia-Georgia border, granted under a military program called “Georgia Land Border Security Project”. The activities, related to the project have been outsourced to a private American company – Parsons Government Services International. DTRA has previously contracted Parsons for similar border security projects in Lebanon, Jordan, Libya and Syria. Parsons have been awarded a $9.2 million contract under the Pentagon border security project on the Russia-Georgia border.

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Local citizens in Chechnya noticed a UAV sprayer near the Russian border with Georgia in 2017.

US Defense Agency tests GM Insects to transmit GM Viruses

The Pentagon has invested at least $65 million in gene editing. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded 7 research teams to develop tools for genome engineering in insects, rodents and bacteria under DARPA’s Safe Gene program, using a novel CRISPR-Cas9 technology.

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Under another military program –Insect Allies, GM insects are engineered to transfer modified genes to plants. The $10.3 million DARPA project includes both gene editing in insects and in the viruses that they transmit. Ecological Niche-preference Engineering is a third ongoing military program for genome engineering in insects. The Pentagon’s stated objective is to engineer GM organisms so that they can resist certain temperatures, change their habitat and food sources.

Source:fbo.gov

Genetically engineered humans

Besides gene editing in insects and in the viruses they transmit, the Pentagon wants to engineer humans as well.

DARPA Advanced Tools for Mammalian Genome Engineering Project seeks to create a biological platform inside the human body, using it to deliver new genetic information, and thus altering humans at the DNA level.

DARPA wants to insert an additional 47th artificial chromosome into human cells. This chromosome will deliver new genes that will be used for engineering the human body. SynPloid Biotek LLChas been awarded two contracts under the program totaling $1.1 million (2015-2016 – $ 100,600 for the first phase of the research; 2015-2017 – $ 999,300 for work which is not specified in the federal contracts registry. The company has only two employees and no previous record on bio-research.

Top Secret Research on Synthetic Viruses

Between 2008 and 2014, the United States invested approximately $820 million in synthetic biology research, Defense being a major contributor. Much of the military projects on synthetic biology are classified, among them are a number of classified studies by the secretive JASON group of US military advisors – e.g. Emerging Viruses and Genome Editing for the Pentagon, and Synthetic Viruses for the National Counterterrorism Center.

JASON is an independent scientific advisory group that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology. It was established in 1960 and most of their resulting JASON reports are classified. For administrative purposes, the JASON’s projects are run by the MITRE Corporation, which has contracts with the Defense Department, CIA and the FBI. Since 2014 MITRE has been awarded some $27.4 million in contracts with the DoD.

Although the JASON Reports are classified, another US Air Force study titled Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens, sheds some light on what the secretive JASON group has researched – 5 groups of genetically engineered pathogens that can be used as bio-weapons. These are binary biological weapons (a lethal combination of two viruses), host swapping diseases (animal viruses that “jump” to humans, like the Ebola virus), stealth viruses, and designer diseases. Designer diseases can be engineered to target a certain ethnic group, meaning that they can be used as ethnic bio-weapons.

Ethnic Bioweapons

Ethnic biological weapon (biogenetic weapon) is a theoretical weapon that aims to primarily harm people of specific ethnicities, or genotypes.

Although officially the research and development of ethnic bio-weapons have never been publicly confirmed, documents show that the US collects biological material from certain ethnic groups – Russians and Chinese.

The US Air Force has been specifically collecting Russian RNA and synovial tissue samples, raising fears in Moscow of a covert US ethnic bio-weapons program.

Source: fbo.gov

Apart from Russians, the US has been collecting biological material from both healthy and cancer patients in China. The National Cancer Institute has collected biological samples from 300 subjects from Linxian, Zhengzhou, and Chengdu in China. While another federal project, titled Serum Metabolic biomarkers discovery study of Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma in China, includes analysis of 349 serum samples which have been collected from Chinese patients.

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The US National Cancer Institute has been collecting biological material from patients of the Chinese Cancer Hospital in Beijing.

Chinese biological material has been collected under a series of federal projects including saliva and cancer tissue. Among them, Genotyping DNA Samples from Lymphoma cases and from controls (healthy patients), Breast cancer tissue blocks from breast cancer patients, Saliva samples of 50 families who have 3 or more cases of UGI cancer, Genotype 50 SNP’S for DNA samples from the Cancer Hospital, Beijing, Genotypes from 3000 cases of gastric cancer and 3000 controls (healthy patients) in Beijing.

Tobacco Vaccines

How the Pentagon helped tobacco companies to profit from Ebola

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has invested $100 million in vaccines production from tobacco plants.

The companies, involved in the project, are owned by the biggest American tobacco companies – Mediacago Inc. is co-owned by Philip Morris and Kentucky BioProcessing, a subsidiary of Reynolds American which is owned by British American Tobacco. Currently they are producing Flu and Ebola vaccines from tobacco plants.

The $100 million program Blue Angel was launched as a response to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. Medicago being awarded $21 million to produce 10, 000 million doses of an influenza vaccine within one month.

Blue Angel program manager Dr. John Julias explains: “Although there are multiple plant species and other organisms being explored as alternative protein production platforms, the US Government has continued to make an investment in tobacco-based manufacturing.”

Photos credit: DARPA

The plant-based vaccine production method works by isolating a specific antigen protein that triggers a human immune response from the targeted virus. A gene from the protein is transferred to bacteria, whichis used to infect plants. The plants then start producing the protein that will be used for vaccinations.

It is not clear why the Pentagon choses to invest in vaccines produced from tobacco plants amongst all other plant species, which they explored. Medicago, co-owned by Philip Morris, paid $495,000 for lobbying the Department of Defense, the Congress and The Department of Health and Human Services for “funding to advance technology to support public health preparedness applications”. The Pentagon funded tobacco companies to develop new technology and to profit from vaccines.

Biological Experiments are war crimes

Article 8 of The Rome Statute of The International Criminal Court (ICC) defines biological experiments as war crimes. The US, however, is not a state party to the international treaty, and cannot be held accountable for its war crimes.

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